Deborah Snyder Talks ‘Suicide Squad,’ ‘Wonder Woman,’ DCEU Films

Deborah Snyder may not be as well-known as her husband, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice director Zack Snyder, but as his business partner and producer, she is as integral to the Warner Bros.’ D.C. Extended Universe as he is. She is taking an even larger role as the studio seeks to rapidly expand their blockbuster slate with D.C. superheroes, with Dawn of Justice acting as springboard to delivering two films a year starting in 2017.

Steve “Frosty” Weintraub of Collider sat down with Snyder to pick her brain about the upcoming D.C. Comics slate, including Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman and Justice League as well as getting her to tease future films like Aquaman.

She said director David Ayer and Patty Jenkins inject new and unique life into the DCEU as it starts branching away from pure Snyder-ism.

David has created this really fun movie about bad guys trying to do good, and it’s brazen, and it has just a really great tone to it, so it’s really fun. And it’s so different from BvS and it’s completely different from what Patty Jenkins is doing with Wonder Woman. With Wonder Woman, it’s an origin story, it takes place also in World War I, so as you can imagine you’re kind of in a completely different world. And even just the color palette and everything of the films are so different from one another. And I think that’s what’s so great about having these directors come on board who have a very strong vision and point of view for these character and these stories and they can really make it their own, so that’s pretty cool.

She also gave updates on the development stages of the various D.C. films, with Suicide Squad in post-production, Wonder Woman halfway through filming, Justice League in prep and Aquaman and The Flash scripts in development.

Suicide Squad is in post and that comes out later this summer, and Wonder Woman we just finished most of the bulk of principal photography in London. They’re taking a two-week hiatus so Gal [Gadot] can some and do press, and then we go back and shoot the Themiscyra sections in Italy, and then come back for some pickups in London, just some green screen and some tank work, and things like that. We start Justice League April 11th and that is at Leavesden, mostly on stage and some locations around there as well as Iceland and I think a beat in Scotland at the end of the schedule. And we are working with James Wan on the development of the Aquaman script right now, and I’m hoping that sometime first quarter of next year we’ll be in production on that movie as well as working on the script for Flash. So it’s a little busy.

That’s a busy schedule for even the biggest producers but Snyder said the opportunity to bring these characters to the big screen definitively, some for the first time, is a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

It’s amazing to be able to get the opportunity to bring these great characters to life. It’s like a dream come true. It’s crazy. It’s busy but we love doing what we do.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hits theaters this Friday. Suicide Squad,Wonder Woman and Justice League are set for release August 6, 2016, June 23, 2017 and November 17, 2017 respectively, with Seth Grahame-Smith’s The Flash and James Wan’s Aquaman tentatively scheduled for March 16, 2018 and July 27, 2018.